


a watched egg never hatches

by bombcollar



Category: Splatoon
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Gen, Kid Fic, Platonic Life Partners
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:40:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26151277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bombcollar/pseuds/bombcollar
Summary: you have *one* egg and suddenly everybody's up in your business about it.
Relationships: Full Moon Glasses/Mask (Splatoon)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 22





	a watched egg never hatches

“Oooh, look at it… Wow.”

“Yeah.”

Their combined ink colors creates the azure of a perfect, cloudless summer sky, the little cluster of translucent eggs bobbing within the plastic kiddie pool they’d set down in the corner of the bedroom. The black cord of a fish tank heater snakes out the side, duct-taped to the floor. The articles they’d read suggested that heating the ink wasn’t usually necessary, but when one or both parents were prone to illness, it could help with healthy development. Outside, the early-morning murmur of traffic, the overcast light of a day that promised intermittent showers.

Neither of them had had younger siblings. Moon hatched albino, and when her worried parents rushed her to the hospital to try and understand what was happening, she’d caught something and become so ill she nearly died in the first weeks of her life. Understandably, this had traumatized her parents out of having any further children, and Moon had grown up an only child, sheltered and a bit spoiled. Mask had an older sister, already 15 when he’d hatched, too distant to easily relate, and so he’d spent much of his time with the other unsupervised children in his hometown.

Still, lots of people had kids. If they could do it, so could the two of them.

“How long’s it take to hatch?” Moon asks, leaning over the pool, one hand pushing her glasses firmly onto her face so they didn’t fall in.

Mask types the query into his phone, reading out the article on the first baby website that popped up. “Uh… Says about six weeks. Usually one egg develops, but sometimes two or three. When it hatches, the larvae eat the undeveloped eggs.”

“Don’t call them larvae!”

“Why not?” Mask looks up from the phone. “That’s what they are. I mean, technically.”

“It sounds so like, sci-fi and weird!” Moon exclaims. “Nobody calls them _larvae_. No one _says congrats on your new larvae._ At least say hatchling or something.”

“Okay. The hatchling eats the other eggs,” Mask goes on. “And there ya go. It’s baby time.”

“Baby time…” Moon murmurs, tucking her knees up to her chest and peering at the pool. Nothing was happening at the moment, of course, and nothing would happen for a while. Resting her chin on her knees, she feels her eyelids drooping. Last night she’d been much too anxious to sleep, and while she didn’t feel any less anxious now that it was morning, it was bound to catch up to her at some point.

Mask reaches over to pat her back, scratching below the thinning fabric of the old Splatfest tee she used as a nightshirt. When they’d first met over a decade ago, in line at GameSplotch, arguing over which Paper Marimo game was better, he never could have imagined they’d eventually end up cooing over an egg in the bedroom of their too-small apartment at 5 in the morning. “You wanna go to bed now? It’s not gonna hatch any faster with you staring at it.”

“Yeah, I know.” With a quiet groan she slips into squid form, slithering the few feet to the futon and sliding under the covers. “G’nite… You gonna sleep too?”

“Nah.” Mask swishes the ink with his hand before getting back to his feet. “I gotta work. If I fall asleep during a call, that’s their problem.”

* * *

Two of the old S4 sit at the kitchen table with coffee Mask had freshly brewed for them. Army stirs exactly one cube of sugar and one spoonful of milk into his. Mask was dumping espresso powder into his own mug. Whatever was in that egg, Army thought, it was going to be born hyperactive.

“So,” he begins, glancing over his shoulder at Moon, who was sitting on the couch in the small living room, tapping away at something on her laptop. The frown she wears suggests it’s work. A few years ago she’d chopped all her tentacles off and kept them short since. “Is Moony your girlfriend, or…?”

“Nah.” Mask doesn’t look up from his coffee, stirring it pensively.

“…really?”

“Yeah.”

“Mask,” Army sounds earnest. “You guys live together. You’re going to have a kid.”

“We’re just hanging out.” Mask shrugs, taking a sip of the disgusting caffeine concoction he’d created.

Army makes a face, then sighs. “Have you thought about names?”

“Yeah. Gonna call ‘em something fun. Like Poptart.”

“You can’t name your child Poptart.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not a real name!”

“Army’s not a real name,” Mask scoffs.

“Army isn’t my actual name.” The other squid sounds exasperated.

“It’s not? Shit.” Mask sips his coffee again, eyebrows raised. “I had no idea, dude. Anyway. It’s my kid, I can name them whatever I want.”

“I suppose.” It wasn’t something Army was interested in arguing with Mask about, and it was always so hard to tell when Mask was being serious about these things. Even in the years since they’d met, Mask had never changed. Always blurring the lines between sarcasm and sincerity. “Have you told your mother?”

“Nah… Not yet.”

“Are you taking this seriously?” Army’s words come out harsher than he intends. He sees Mask’s ears fold back, and quickly corrects himself, guilt creeping up his throat. “Sorry. I just want to be sure. This isn’t a game.”

“I know that. I’ll tell her when I tell her.” Mask expression remains impassive as he takes another sip, but his ears still droop. The old notches in them had never healed fully. “I showed you the baby room. We got all the stuff we needed… Place is a little small, but we’ll be okay for now. We can always get a bigger apartment.”

Army nods, quiet for a moment. “Can I ask something else?” He takes Mask’s wordless glance up at him as permission. “Why exactly did you decide to do this? To… You know. To have a kid?”

Mask doesn’t say anything for a minute, looking down at the table, arms loosely folded. The clicking of Moon’s laptop keys drifts in from the other side of the room. “Why does anybody have kids?” He eventually asks, raising the mug to his face again. Army got the impression this wasn’t a typical deflection. Mask had an answer, but couldn’t, or didn’t feel like articulating it.

“Come on. Seriously.”

With a soft sigh, Mask rolls his eyes up at him. “Because I thought we would be good parents. Is that what you wanted to hear? Or did you want to hear that I had no fucking idea what I was doing.”

“No, no,” Army replies quickly, blinking a few times. “I- that’s great, I’m glad that’s the reason.”

“Yeah.” Getting to his feet, Mask goes to the coffeemaker refills his mug, this time sipping it black. “Finally got me to admit I give a shit about something. Must feel pretty good huh.”

“It does.” He smiles.

* * *

“So this was the first day… and this was the second, and the third…” Moon holds her phone out since Rims had refused to take it, insisting he needed both hands to eat his lunch as quickly as possible. She swipes through the gallery, leaning across the outdoor café table.

“Can we speed this up a little?” He asks between bites of his tuna wrap. “It’s not that I’m not thrilled for you, but if I’m not back at my desk in exactly 30 minutes I’m really gonna hear it from my supervisor.”

“Alright, alright!” Moon skips to the final photo in the series. The largest egg in the cluster was cloudy, the dark eyespots of a larval squid visible within. “Look!”

Rims squints at the photo. “Not much to see yet.”

“Yeah, I know.” Moon shrugs, sitting back and sipping her smoothie. “But a few weeks ago there wasn’t _anything_ to see. Now it’s got eyes and stuff! When there was nothing there!”

“I’m sure they’ll be adorable once they hatch…” Rims takes another bite of his depressing office lunch. “Are you going to have a shower or anything? I don’t have much time to go to those things, but I’ll try to see if I can at least pick up some toys for you.”

“People keep asking us that! But y’know, we don’t want it to be a big deal…” 

“Some extra stuff couldn’t hurt. I’ve been to your place. You’ve only got one bedroom. The bathroom’s tiny. That’s basically why you tell people you’ve got a kid, so they give you stuff.”

“Cod, you’re so cynical.” Moon sticks her tongue out at him. “My parents make a big deal out of everything. They always have, all my life. And I get it, like, I wasn’t the healthiest kid, maybe they were just happy I made it through another year. Maybe I just wanna be lowkey about it for a while. When I’m ready for them to get all gushy, I’ll tell them.”

Rims nods, stuffing the rest of his lunch into his mouth. “Guesh that’sh reasonable. I don’t like it when people make a big deal out of things that really aren’t one. I mean, people have kids every day…”

“It’s a big deal to _me_ ,” Moon frowns at him. The plastic cup crinkles as she squeezes it a little too hard. “That’s not what I was saying, I just mean I don’t want other people flipping out about it… You won’t tell anyone, right?”

“Who would I tell?”

Moon opens her mouth, then shuts it, frowning. “…do you wanna come over sometime, Rimzy? Just to have dinner and hang out?”

Rims is already checking his phone, getting up out of his chair. “Maybe, dunno if I’ll have time. I’m just-” He catches a glimpse of her face. “…really busy right now.”

“Alright.” She lifts a hand in farewell, a watery smile on her face. “Seeya Rims…”

“Bye, Moon. Call me when your uh… When it hatches.”

* * *

“You should like… livestream it.”

“What?” Moon doesn’t look away from the screen, Marimo Party’s colorful graphics playing across the lenses of her glasses. She’s waggling her controllers with the kind of intense focus usually relegated to bomb-defusing.

“The… Your kid. The egg.” Des leans over and she pushes him back with her elbow because no way was she gonna let him break her focus. Those coins were _hers_.

Mask snorts at the suggestion. “It’s an egg, they don’t do much.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t matter. People will still tune in.”

“Just because your subscribers would log in to watch you eat a bowl of cereal doesn’t mean everybody’s interested in sharing every mundane detail of everybody else’s lives.” Jersey is leaning very far forward as if the change in posture would make her victory more certain.

“Oh yeah? Is that why you asked to be a mod? Because you love watching me eat cereal?” Des grins cheekily at her.

“It pays better than my real job…”

“Y’know, I thought about it, but it’s kind of a personal thing,” Moon says. “It’s not like showing off some rare merch I got or whatever, it’s like…”

“It’s someone,” Mask offers, glancing over. “It’s gonna be someone. And they don’t get to choose whether they get shown all over the internet for Likes. Not that I ever cared about that stuff anyway.”

“Guess that makes sense.” Des seems a little sheepish for having suggested it. “I was mostly joking, y’know. Like… livestreaming an egg? Might as well livestream a houseplant.”

“You could just take a picture of it every day. I did do that, for the egg, but I didn’t post any of them…” Only a select few had gotten to see Moon’s egg progress pictures. The desire to share it was there, but something held her back, other than the worry that her folks would find it. Mask had always been an intensely private person, so she didn’t worry about him spreading the word at all. Plus he’d confided that the idea of showing up to some reunion years later with a fully-formed child like it was no big deal was extremely funny to him. Moon had to agree.

The minigame ends, and each member of Cyan watches the screen as the results are tallied. Moon ends up with the most stars, to Des’s dismay. Her third win that night.

* * *

“Is it supposed to do that?”

Moon lies on her stomach, chin resting in her folded arms at the edge of the futon. The pool full of ink has been pushed up against it, now dominated by one egg that has been steadily swelling for the past 24 hours. Its shiny surface is opaque, glowing eerily in the dim light of their bedroom. They’d both been keeping careful watch of it and the little squid inside. Hatchlings naturally observed their surroundings from the transparent shells of their eggs, and she was sure she’d seen them watching her, pressing their tiny tentacles to the barrier. It was a bit worrying now, not to be able to see them anymore. Were they okay in there?

Mask sits up, squinting from the other end of the bed, his face illuminated by the glow of his phone screen. “Yeah, pretty sure. It fills up with ink just before it hatches.”

It had to be close, then. Moon licks her lips, swallows, staring at the blue bubble. A moment later, Mask crawls over next to her, leaning on his elbows. They both watch the egg. Mask leans over to lay his head against hers, and she does the same, shifting closer.

“…watching it’s not make it gonna go any quicker,” Mask remarks quietly. A siren rises and falls in the distance. The windows are open, letting in the cool summer evening. They can hear people chatting, indistinct, on the streets below. The fan is on, but it seems to do little to stir the air in their tiny bedroom.

Moon nods in reply, but neither of them looks away. “…I don’t need it to happen quickly,” she says. “We’ll have lots of time, yeah? Plus, you know… nothing’s gonna be the same once it hatches.”

“I guess not.”

Mask threads his arm around hers takes her hand.

Things weren’t going to be the same. They were going to be better. Better than either of them had gotten. They would both see to that.


End file.
